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Visual of the “test-firing of hypersonic missile Hwasong-8” on Tuesday released by North Korean state-run media outlets the Rodong Sinmun newspaper and Korean Central News Agency. (Yonhap News)

Jo Chol-su, director of the Department of International Organizations at North Korea’s foreign ministry, advised that the UN Security Council (UNSC) “had better think what consequences it will bring in the future in case it tries to encroach upon the sovereignty of the DPRK again with the double-dealing stick, while attaching weight to the US-style brigandish way of thinking and judgment.”

Jo’s remarks came in a statement published Sunday afternoon by the Korean Central News Agency.

In the statement, he said the UNSC had been acting “at the instigation of the US” when it “convened a meeting behind closed doors on [Friday], where it faulted the activities of the DPRK for self-defence.”

Previously, the UNSC reportedly held a closed-door emergency meeting at UN headquarters in New York on Friday in response to North Korea’s announcement of its test of the hypersonic Hwasong-8 missile on Tuesday, but was unable to adopt a joint statement due to objections from China and Russia.

Jo expressed “strong concerns” over the UNSC’s activities, calling them “a denial of impartiality, objectivity and equilibrium, lifelines of the UN activities, and an evident manifestation of double-dealing standard,” as well as “open ignorance of and wanton encroachment on the sovereignty of the DPRK and a serious intolerable provocation against it.”

Analysts read his statement as an official “for-the-record” response intended to curb activities by the UNSC.

They based this conclusion on the fact that the statement’s author is a working-level official representing the North’s department in charge of UN diplomacy and the absence of any signals to the UN beyond the abstract warning that it “had better think what consequences [such activities] will bring.”

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer

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